When update of setting information of respective network equipments connected to a network and constituting a service in cooperation with each other are to be performed, the update for the respective equipments needs to be performed according to the predetermined order. Otherwise, the update processing may not operate properly depending on the type of the service or content of new setting information.
There is known a method for performing such update processing for network equipments. In this method, as shown in FIG. 17, a network equipment management device 101 transmits new setting information to network equipment so as to update the setting information thereof. Then, the network equipment management device 101 transmits the new setting information to network equipment so as to update the setting information thereof. In this manner, the network equipment management device 101 repeats the update processing according to a predetermined order to thereby update the setting information of all network equipments.
There is known another method in which, as shown in FIG. 18, timers S110, S113, and S116 are set in respective network equipments according to their update order, and respective network equipments access the network equipment management device 101 based on the count result of the timers so as to acquire new setting information for their update.